When a tragic family accident brings Laura Fleming back home to Byerly, North Carolina, the sleuth discovers that her beloved grampaw's fatal fall from a ladder in the old mill was not an accident.

Back home in North Carolina for a family reunion, Laura Fleming and her husband, Richard, instead encounter a mysterious corpse, and the ensuing investigation uncovers some family skeletons.

Laura Fleming, savvy sleuth of Dead Ringer and Down Home Murder, returns to her North Carolina home town to attend her aunt's second wedding to her third husband - but murder and mayhem soon disrupt the plans.

With her husband off in England, snowbound Laura Fleming is looking forward to spending a quiet weekend alone, until a wicked winter squall sweeps the Boston police to her front door. The body of her old college boyfriend, Philip Dennis, has been found frozen in the alley behind her Back Bay apartment. To make matters worse, he'd arrived at Laura's only hours before looking for a place to stay.

The Tight as a Tick Flea Market is one of Byerly's most popular attractions. But insiders know it as a hornet's nest of greed, envy, and ruthless competition. When dealer Carny Alexander is found carved up with one of his own collectible knives, Laura Fleming discovers that the flea market is swarming with suspects.

Now, in a delightful new tale of buried Southern secrets, Laura Fleming returns once again to her hometown of Byerly, North Carolina. To the folks of Byerly, carpetbaggers rank right up there in popularity with death and taxes. So when Northerners Marshall and Grace Saunders try to buy out the town's largest mill, it's no shock the proposed sale nearly causes a second Civil War. But Laura is surprised when the mill's president, Butt Walters, confidentially asks her to muckrake through the Saunders' backgrounds, even though Big Bill Walters, Burt's dad, the controlling owner of the mill, wants to sell.

As Christmas approaches, Laura plans to curl up in her Boston apartment with her English professor husband, Richard, to await the birth of their first child. But when her cousin asks Richard to direct A Christmas Carol, Laura heads back home to unpleasant surprises. First, running a play transforms mild-mannered Richard into a backstage tyrant. Next, Seth, the play's Scrooge, is a washout as an actor. And the worst surprise of all - grimmer than the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come - Seth is brutally murdered.

Since the birth of her six-month-old daughter, Laura Fleming has wanted to do nothing but camp out in her Boston apartment and dream of having one good night's sleep. But then her Aunt Nora calls to say there's trouble brewing back home in Byerly, North Carolina. It seems Aunt Maggie has gone and married Big Bill Walters - and now someone's trying to kill the old coot. That's enough to get Laura packing the diaper bag.